Free and open to the public, three JJA meetings on issues facing writers, photographers, broadcasters and webcasters take place in the Sheraton NY and Towers, 811 7th Ave. Our hands-on workshops on video for the web and blog basics are being held offsite (respectively at the midtown Training Center of the Mediakite production services firm and at the New School Jazz performance space) and require pre-registration as do the Jazz Masters sessions. The two related APAP forums that are open to everybody also request that reservations be made. Oh, we’re having a cocktail party, too, and the NEA is generously hosting a lunch for jazz journalists. Here again is the link to details on these events.

If this announcement seems a tad last-minute for such a full program, please know that the JJA planned it all months back, but was stymied by rejection of grant applications to support the conference from three separate funding organizations. The rejections were kind and understandable, but required our organization to downscale its presentations and especially the number of journalists involved, since we originally wanted to involve arts reporters from diverse genres as most everyone covering the musical arts and industries faces similar challenges in the current mediascape. Well, the meeting room which APAP has graciously given the JJA for its January meetings will hold 40 to 50 people, so we’ve waited to put out the word, hoping still to attract attendees but knowing that a vast crowd can’t really be accommodated.

Never mind — are you a jazz journalist, in NYC-vicinity next weekend? Want to attend and/or participate in the JJA’s meetings? Leave a comment below or email me at President@JazzJournalists.org. Information on documentation of this conference is to be announced; watch this space!

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 30 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006) Read More…

About Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life?
What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

@JazzMandel

More Me

Archives

Interviews & Articles

Howard Mandel c 1998/published by DownBeat, July 1998, under headline Beneath the Underdog (the editor's reference to Charles Mingus's autobiography):
There's an anchor for New York's downtown free jazz and improv "wild bunch": his name is William … [Read More...]

This is a complete version of the feature on pianist Matthew Shipp I wrote for The Wire, published in February, 1998
Is this the face of New York's jazz avant now? Pianist Matt Shipp's mug can be wide open, inquisitive, or guardedly blank, his … [Read More...]

Miles Davis
intended On The Corner to be a
personal statement, an esthetic breakthrough and a social provocation upon its
release in fall of 1972. He could hardly have been more successful: the album
was all that, though it has taken decades for its … [Read More...]